Amalgam
by Chibi-Reaper
Summary: Another 'Xander wears a different Halloween costume', punctuated with my own style. Experiment number 117803490215A, welcome to Sunnyhell.
1. Chapter 1

Xander groaned under his breath at the sight of the apparently ransacked shop. He had meant to meet up with Wills and Buffy just over an hour ago, but he'd lost himself in flipping through his treasure trove of manga and comic books. By the time he'd glanced at the clock a long time had passed, and he was very late. Partytown was still an option, but it would be very expensive...

"Ahem. I was actually closing."

Xander jumped and spun around in shock.

"Don't do that!"

The man's eyebrows arched as Xander caught his breath, hand clasped to his chest.

"Sorry. Its just that someone I know, Giles, he does that all the time. I think he enjoys watching people freak when he sneaks up behind them."

The eyebrows remained arched, but there was a brief flash of recognition in his eyes.

"Giles? This wouldn't happen to be Rupert Giles by any chance, would it?"

Xander nodded.

"School librarian. You know him?"

"We were actually good friends in our youth... could you do me a favor and not tell him that I've set up shop here just yet? I'd like to surprise him."

Xander quickly nodded in agreement again, happy to help.

"Excellent. But I'd be a poor businessman if I asked you to do something for me with nothing in exchange... I know. All of the full costumes have already been sold, but feel free to see if you can put together your own costume from whats left. Free of charge. It would really cost me more to store all of these for next halloween than I could possibly hope to sell them for... whatever's left over, I'll just throw out with the rest. It's really two favors for me, if you think about it the right way."

Much as he doubted he would really be able to put something together from the toys and pieces of clothing left over, Xander was incapable of avoiding the allure of free stuff. It wasn't long at all before he was wandering through the store with a basket, rummaging through the sad, pitiful remnants of what was left after a screaming horde of children had taken their pick. There were a few toy knives here and there, a couple masks, two or three sets of fake vampire teeth... his eyes swung back to the knives. That one plastic bayonet looked almost like the kind that Paladin Anderson would use in the Hellsing manga.

Time seemed to freeze for a moment as his brain suddenly kicked into overdrive. This was a good idea. No not just a good idea, this was an _excellent_ idea. Rather than just taking a couple of accesories to make himself average, like a normal costume of a beastman or magician... or an army officer, like he'd been considering... he would go one better and create a costume in its entirety. He suddenly seemed more energized as he picked up one thing after the next. A set of sunglasses and a plastic katana joined the bayonet, followed by a set of contacts to change the color of the irises to gold and make the pupil look like slits. A long white wig, he estimated the hair would reach a few inches past the small of his back. A set of fake fingernails, shaped like tiny spades, that would make it look like small claws growing out of his fingernails. A set of 'werewolf' fangs, with a special glue to fix them to his teeth. A large, black, widebrimmed hat, slightly dusty as it had fallen behind a cabinet. A few small rubber ninja stars. Add that to things he could get elsewhere. He nodded at Ethan and left, not noticing the way the man's eyes suddenly obtained a feverishly excited gleam.

A quick stop at a dingy little shop picked up the last few items he needed. Actually, he was well known in this shop... sometimes staked vampires would leave stuff behind after they were dusted. Sometimes it was really good stuff. So sometimes he would come back to the site of the staking to pick the stuff up before any of the other vamps in the area started poking their noses out of whatever holes they'd darted into when the Slayer had come by. This particular little shop was run by a man who seldom asked questions of or about the people who sold things to him... or the people he sold them to. Xander knew for a fact that he'd sold the same set of fingerless gloves to him at least six times, taken from six seperate vampires. Within a few minutes of hushed conversation with the shopkeep he had acquired a coat, dropping down to his midcalf, a set of boots with about a dozen more buckles than necessary, and the fingerless gloves.

Half an hour later, he was admiring the impressive figure he cut in the mirror. If he worked out a little bit more, and was carrying real weapons rather than the toy variety, he might be almost intimidating enough to scare the local nightlife. The only drawback was that most of the local nightlife was too stupid to be intimidated, and most of the rest was too smart and/or powerful to be. He shrugged and left, imagination still whirring in the backgroung, fleshing out the character he had created, even though it would likely only die down once the Halloween candy hype had ended.

xxx

Xander's eyes widened as Buffy stepped down her stairs, dressed as an elegant noblewoman. Logically, he knew that it was an attempt to impress the deadboy, but that didn't stop him staring, or his tongue from drying out.

"W-wow. Duchess Buffy. I'm impressed... and feel a sudden disdain and disgust for all things spandex."

Buffy grinned at his impromptu funny.

"Oh, and if you think this is nice, take a look at... Casper."

"That's... a mighty fine Boo you got there Wills."

Under the white makeup and sheets she grinned.

xxx

Some time later, Ethan began to scream as the spell he was casting suddenly turned violent, ripping far more power out of him than he had been prepared to feed into it. Even as he voiced his agony, a part of him wondered what had gone wrong with the spell. Backlash such as this would only be expected if someone had been turned into something significantly more powerful than he'd expected, but he had stocked his wares carefully. Scary yes, powerful no. The most his spell had been meant for was a bit of chaos and mischief... something had gone terribly wrong.

As he spasmed on the floor, barely alive, and began crawling for the cupboards where he kept restorative potions in stock for just such accidents as this, his mind shot to his last customer. At the time, he'd only been thinking of the fact that he'd spilled some of his spell components on the bins, making them somewhat more potent, but if the boy had happened to be a much more imaginative sort than he'd pegged him as, he could have a problem. The spell he had used had originally been designed permament, the head of a cult would give his followers special outfits, chant the spell, and bam. Instant fanatic zealots for his cause. He had tampered heavily with the spell, the most important change being its lifespan... but that was tied in heavily with the costume itself.

For all the other people who'd bought a costume, they were something generic. A vampire, a werewolf, a witch, a ghost. They didn't think too heavily about their costume beyond that, and so the magic had little grip on them. It would shift them to their costume, one weak little monster among many, then turn them back once the spell ended. The slight bit of extra power behind the accessories doused in spell components would make the spell slightly stronger, but only to the point where one or two physical attributes or personality quirks from the chosen costume would be left behind when the spell ended. Janus only knew what had been going on in the boy's head as he crafted his costume... though whatever he had become, it was immensely powerful.

He clamped his teeth on the cork in the small bottles mouth, jerking it out swiftly and slugging back the entire disgusting concoction in one go before reaching for a second bottle, and then a third. He would have to be careful about performing magic for the next few weeks, as taking this much of the potion at once could have disastrous effects on anything he tried to attempt, not to mention what a second backlash could do to him. As the third bottle hit the floor, Ethan very seriously considered grabbing his emergency travel pack and getting the hell out of town. Right now, chaotic uprising and all. Trying to convince Giles to let the Ripper back out was one thing, and only dangerous. Taking the risk that whatever that kid had become put the pieces together and came to hunt him down was quite another, and probably completely suicidal. He groaned as he began feebly attempting to reach vertical stature.

Of course, his plans hinged on being able to move fast enough to grab his things and get to a car before someone tracked him down... and if it was only Giles, he'd count himself fortunate.

xxx

With an eerily fluid, catlike grace, Experiment number 117-8034-90215-A, codename 'Amalgam' rose to its feet and glanced with the slightest amount of curiosity at its surroundings. With cool logic, it tacked down the list of possible things to account for its sudden appearance in this area. A training scenario for a game to amuse its creators? Negative. Scanning indicated that no mission parameters had been downloaded into its neural centers, and the miniature possible-hostiles seemed disinclined to attack... yet.

A see through image of a young woman in revealing garb, possibly a hologram, drifted over its way.

"Xander! Xander... everyones become their halloween costumes... everyones... Oh my god, Buffy! We have to find her, she'll be helpless!"

Amalgam processed the information and came to a conclusion. It was a game then. No real mission parameters, save those set by this hologram. Amalgam was roleplaying as someone named 'Xander', in the midst of a town gone mad as some unidentified force turned innocent trick or treaters into their costumes, with all the bloodthirsty insticts added.

Major objective, locate and protect one 'Buffy', with further orders to come from the hologram. Minor objective, use of only nonlethal force against hostiles. Limiters set at 0.2 of full power. Regeneration levels locked at 5. Weapons limited to fists. Demonic abilities fully sealed. Vampiric abilities fully sealed. Celestial abilities fully sealed. Magical abilities fully sealed. Trans-phasic abilities fully sealed. Psychic abilities fully sealed. Shapeshifting abilities fully sealed. Alchemic sciences limited to minor transmutations. Battle styles limited to Tendo Musabetsu Kakutou Ryu, minor Saotome Musabetsu Kakutou Ryu. Advanced forms sealed. Intermediate forms sealed. Classification level limited to Advanced Beginner. All other martial arts forms sealed. Begin game. 

In less than a second, it had created and accepted its own mission parameters in the absence of one of its creators to craft them for it. It nodded and followed the hologram as it began to drift swiftly away.

In her panic and concern for Buffy's welfare, Willow didn't stop to wonder why Xander was acting slightly odd.

xxx

A.N.

It's been a while since I uploaded anything, but I do have an excuse for any loyal followers. Wow... that sounded a lot less arrogant in my head. Recently, I got a hold of a copy of Oblivion. The game is awesome. How awesome? Lets put it like this... did you know that if you play a game for anywhere above 24 hours in a row, the disc can overheat and fry completely and you'll have to replace it if you want to play any more? Neither did I. _That's_ how awesome the game is, and I'm only up to level ten.

Anyway, I recently read a glut of Halloween-fic crossovers and had to write my own. Originally, I had Xander dress as either Anderson or Alucard of the Hellsing manga, but then I had a way more awesome idea. Amalgam is my creation, and just what it sounds like, an amalgam of lots of different anime and manga characters, mixed together and grown in a lab by the mysterious 'creators', a species of scientists with dimension-crossing capabilities. Quick backstory that will probably not be mentioned in the actual story if I continue it for very long, the creators created Amalgam as a science experiment, and the best it's ever treated by them is as an amusing pet. The 'games' are held for the amusement of these creators, and are held in either virtual reality simulators or alternate dimensions. Think of them like the video games that normal people play when they're bored, except the main character has a mind of its own and, outside the occasional mission objective set by the creators, can basically do whatever it pleases. That doesn't mean that Amalgam is always cast as the 'good' guy. Sometimes the mission objectives and parameters would be very unheroish... he would be playing Sephiroth rather than Cloud, so to speak. The creators taught it to deal with that by forcefully severing its emotions and morals and messing heavily with its head, beginning with Amalgam referring to itself as a genderless 'it', despite technically being male... most of the time... and honestly preferring to think of itself as an object, or sentient being, rather than a person.

Also, keep an eye out for experiment 117-8034-90215-B, who was not offered this... dubious aid. Ever so slight descent into madness. I still have to fully flesh the characters out, but they should be impressive.


	2. Chapter 2

The noblewoman's shrill scream pierced the night as a metal demon raced past her on the odd roads. This was exactly the worst thing that could happen, as it dragged the attention of every psuedo-monster in the area directly to her. One moment of common sense and terror overriding noblish protocol later, Lady Elizabeth Summers had hiked her skirts up past her ankles... very nearly exposing her calves!... and was running for dear life from the horde of monsters behind her.

Nearby, Spike was grinning wildly at the display. He'd had his doubts about Dru's little vision earlier... after all, Halloween had always been dead before, why would that change now?... but this was an opportunity far too good to pass up. The Slayer, truly helpless as she seemed?

His grin stretched even wider, revealing pointy fangs.

xxx

The hologram leading it had turned and homed in on the scream, barely taking the time to use paths that it could traverse in her haste to reach Buffy. Within a few moments, she was watching in horror as Buffy desperately did her best to outrun the children-turned-demons. She had to help, but what could she do? She was a ghost, and couldn't interact with the physical world.

And then, right in the middle of Willow's panic attack... Amalgam _blurred_ forward, and was almost immediately in the fray, all fists and feet swinging... and in the blink of an eye, or so it seemed, the entire large group of psuedo-monsters had been knocked out and were slumped in various positions across the street. And Xander was walking back to them like absolutely nothing was wrong with that picture.

No... not Xander. He too had...

"Xander, You.. You became your costume! What was it... Experiment something... Amalgam?"

Amalgam cocked its head slightly to the side, expressing what it believed was confusion and a desire for her to continue speaking, even as it processed the new information. Many seconds of frantic Willow-babble later, it believed it had pieced the situation together much better with the new information. This was not a game. Nor was it a training scenario or virtual reality apparently. Given the information... it was entirely possible that the hologram... ghost... was correct, and its very existence was owed to an entirely human teenager's overactive imagination during the creation of a halloween costume. Intriguing.

Even so, there was the possibility that the ghost was incorrect, and this was a game with a touch of extra realism added. To err on the side of caution, it decided to keep the mission sets running at the current setting, but added a third objective. Identification and elimination of the unknown force causing the chaos on the streets of this small town.

xxx

After a snap decision by Willow to bring them all to Buffy's house, where a vampire dropped in on them... Amalgam decided not to kill it after it was loudly exclaimed that 'he's on our side!'. The ghost, Willow, had left to contact someone named Giles, who she believed could help, and left him and the Vampire, Angel, to guard Buffy and a girl named Cordelia, who had apparently, and mysteriously, not changed like everyone else had. As he checked the security of the upper floor, mindful of the fact that a window left open could lead to an assault from above, Buffy's piercing scream rang out, followed almost immediately by the sound of a door slamming open and a terrified noblewoman fleeing, screaming 'Vampire' at the top of her lungs.

Amalgam mentally debated cursing as it swiftly paced back down the stairs, to where Angel was stammering in slight shock.

"She... I... She walked in on me fighting one of the little monsters, and she freaked and ran!"

Amalgam gave the slightest frown as it paced swiftly out the back door, not pausing to continue conversation with the two following it. Its main objective was still the protection of Buffy Summers, and failure had never been an option.

xxx

At about the same time Amalgam punched out a pirate, enjoying it far more than he really had any reason to, Giles was causing severe damage to a certain chaos mage. After a few minutes of pain, Ethan was all to willing to allow the spell to be ended prematurely.

"The statue! Break the statue of Janus, and the spell will end!"

Giles dropped Ethan to the floor, where he lay still and breathing heavily. With a slight grunt at the weight of the thing he lifted it up over his head, and hurled it to the ground.

Elsewhere, a terrified noblewoman suddenly sprouted a deep glower and, no stakes at hand, made do with punching Spike in the nose with her full Slayer strength. There was an audible crunch of bone shattering as Spike slumped to the ground, moaning softly. Cordelia and Angel rushed up to Buffy, making absolutely sure that she was alright, and he took the opportunity provided by their distraction to crawl off and drop down a sewer main.

Xander, however, was occupied with staring at his now sharp and pointy fingernails. Slowly, one hand reached up towards his head and tugged at the 'wig'. It didn't come off. Carefull prodding of his eyes and teeth proved that he wasn't wearing any contacts or extentions either. The armory hidden in his coat weighed far too much to be plastic... and a tiny voice in his head was chiming 'objective complete'.

He turned and stepped into the darkness, walking slowly at first, then breaking out into a full run for his house. This was not good... very not good. He would... take a nap, and when he woke up this would all have been just a dream, and he would be back to normal.

xxx

But it wasn't a dream, and when he woke, it was to stare in the mirror at a face that wasn't his. He panicked, and would have screamed if he didn't have to worry about waking the other two occupants of the house from their alcohol-induced stupors. After a few minutes he managed to get his breathing back under control and flipped through everything he'd remembered thinking of when inventing this character. After another few minutes he finally remembered something useful. Shapeshifting. Thankful that it was a saturday and he wasn't expected anywhere until the afternoon, he pulled up a chair and sat in front of the mirror, wincing as he accidentally caught his excessively long hair on something.

Half an hour of weird faces and frustration later he was steamed. He had to make this work, it had to work! If the other Scoobies found out about this he wasn't sure what they'd do... well, actually he was pretty sure he knew exactly what they'd do. They'd do their best to try to get rid of his 'unnatural powers', likely beginning with some form of exorcism. Exactly what that exorcism could do was what worried him. Explaining just why an exorcism reacted badly to the demon or vampiric bits of what he had become would be difficult enough to explain, let alone what havoc everything else could cause. He grimaced again, then paused to recall the little voice in his head. What the hell... worth a shot. He focused on thinking to himself in words, as clearly as possible.

'Release limiters on shapeshifting.'

Suddenly, his entire body... squished, for lack of a better term. Muscles, bones, organs, all seemingly shifted to the general consistency of jelly. His face had seemed to melt, eyelids drooping over cheeks, and jaw drooping down to his chest. He lifted an arm and stared in fascination, eyes bugging out as though they were on stalks, as it rolled up into a spiral and then split into tentacles. He glanced at his other hand, which seemed to be forming itself into a spiny lobster claw, and groaned.

In the end, it took him over an hour to get his face and body right... not because it was difficult to change his shape, but because with the limiters removed it was simply far too easy, and he had to fight his body to keep it in one shape... it wasn't perfect, there were a few small deviations that he would probably have to do a lot of quick talking to explain away. The fact that his pupils were still slitted being the main one. Fortunately, his eyes were a darker shade of brown, so it would be difficult to tell from a distance. All the other variations were easily dismissed, and could easily be explained as carry-over from last night because he'd made his own costume out of bits and pieces, rather than buying a full costume... hell, from what he understood of magic, the laws governing it were so seemingly nonsensical that that may well be the exact reason that he'd kept all the mojo he'd thought up for his costume.

'New face completed. Save 'Xander Harris' for quick recall in later situations? Yes/No?'

Used to video games that would ask questions like that, he thought 'Yes' before he'd really thought about it, then blinked as it registered.

'Saving physical appearance and bio-map... Complete. Form two: Xander Harris added to Natural Form in Neural databanks.'

Xander just sat there staring at his reflection for several minutes before he cursed, loudly. Great. Now he had a computer living in his head too. He didn't remember anything like that...

Deep within his mind, behind multiple locked doors and barred gates, Amalgam expressed the slightest amusement to itself, and formulated a new objective, fitting its apparent new role as a symbiote.

'Remain undetected.'

xxx

Unsurprisingly, given the vast majority of infiltration and spy type games Amalgam had been sent to play... games that Xander had the memories of playing, and could access and review at any time due to his head-computer-thingy, as he termed it... he remained undetected for quite some time, easily explaining any minor mistakes away, and expressing a profound and very well feigned shock the day his eyes were discovered.

And if he spent a few nights experimenting with his little shapeshifting ability, and then a few unconfirmed rumors becan circulating around the vampire community that a perfect likeness of Alexander Anderson had bayoneted a nest of lower level vampires, or later when that guy in red had taken out a group of demons... well, none of it was ever connected to him. He thought of them as similar to sidequests, ways to work off stress as he did his best to hide behind the mask of the Zeppo.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and eventually it was discovered that the curse binding Liam's soul to Angel could be broken.

The hard way.

All sorts of chaos and murder had resulted from the return of Angelus, leading up to where they were now. Acathla had opened a portal to an Infernal dimension, and Buffy had gone to do her best to take out Angelus and close it. Xander had followed behind, fully intending to finish the job for her should she fail or choke. Giles had arrived as fast as he could, to tell Buffy what the key was to closing the portal.

Angel's blood.

Then her tears had come, and his resolve broke, even as he could tell that she fully intended to go through with it, no matter how much it hurt her. A few quick mental commands and he raised his arm, paralyzing them all where they stood. Only then did he leave his concealment in the shadows to look at the newly-ensouled Angel.

And drive a six-inch long knife into his side.

"You know Dead-boy... I came here with the sole intention of killing you if Buffy couldn't. But now? Now I just can't do it."

Xander savagely jerked the knife out and caught some of the undead's blood in his hand, smearing it over his forehead.

"You ever make Buffy cry again though... and I'll come back from hell to make you miserable. You can bet on it!"

Xander grinned widely, if emptily, as his face changed. His bared teeth grew obviously sharper, as did his fingernails, his eyes flashed and were yellow again, prominently displaying the slits, and his hair lengthened and turned white until, within two and a quarter seconds, he was once again a perfect match with the costume he'd worn on halloween. He reached within his coat and pulled out a massive nodachi, so long that it wasn't possible under the laws of physics to have been hidden there... hells, the thing was slightly longer than Xander was tall!

Then, fixed grin still on his face, even as his eyes gave the lie to it, he turned and charged through the portal, blade at a ready position for whatever he might find inside. The portal closed behind him.

And then the Paralysis wore off and the horrified screaming began.

xxx

A.N.

I actually spent several hours trying to figure out how to write this. First came the easy part, what to do with a horrendously overpowered Xander? Send him someplace where he can use that power... how about hell? But how to get him there? There were multiple false starts and I had to completely rewrite this chapter once before I managed to get it to approximate what I wanted. Not exactly perfect, but good enough to post.

And now that I've appeased you all with a new chapter of something, excuse me while I get back to gaming... Oblivion calls for me.


End file.
